Remember when OnePlus didn’t care about IP ratings? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
It wasn’t that long ago that OnePlus did not include IP ratings in its smartphones. Back when Carl Pei was at OnePlus, his team said that to get the phones certified for an IP rating, it would cost about $30 more per phone. And the team also said that “the certification doesn’t help us communicate our focus on your real experience”. Well times have definitely changed.
That quote was from a post on the OnePlus Community back in 2019, so it wasn’t that long ago that OnePlus was against ingress protection certification. And now here we are in big 2025 where OnePlus just announced a new phone with not one, but four ingress protection certifications.
During it’s launch event this week, OnePlus noted that the new OnePlus 15 has IP66, IP68, IP69 and IP69K certification. Which means that OnePlus is adding a new certification every year. As last year, we got IP69 and now we have IP69K which most people never heard of.
IP69K is the highest Ingress Protection (IP) rating, indicating that an enclosure is protected against dust, high-pressure, high-temperature water, and chemicals. The “69” part of the rating signifies absolute dust-proofness and protection against high-pressure and high-temperature water jets, which are often used for cleaning in harsh environments like the food and beverage industry. The “K” suffix is an additional, more rigorous standard for water resistance.
IP69K is arguably a bit overkill for a smartphone, but it’s nice to have it here. With the OnePlus 13 we could already toss it into a washing machine or dishwasher to clean with the IP69 rating, and now it can withstand that even more. Basically, this is as water-resistant as you’re going to get – and you still have a SIM card slot.
OnePlus claimed that IP certification would cost around $30 per device
In 2019, around the time of the OnePlus 7 being announced, the company told media that it would not have an official IP rating because it would drive up the cost. It would add about $30 to the cost of each device. Though many were skeptical of this claim and still are.
Now what OnePlus was saying is true; it does cost money to get a phone IP certified. We don’t know the exact cost, but it can cost up to $5,000 for more rigorous testing, and we also don’t know if that’s a flat rate for the testing, or if that is for each certification (i.e. OnePlus 15 has four ratings, so would that be $20,000?). But that’s definitely not $30 per device. That would mean OnePlus was only planning to sell around 166 devices.
Remember that this was back when OnePlus was more focused on price. More focused on being the “Flagship killer” versus now where they are the flagship. Of course, now in 2025, if they were to sell the OnePlus 15 for $899 without any IP ratings, they would get ridiculed and laughed out of the market. So this was a good idea to turn things around.
Why the sudden change in heart?
We don’t know for sure, but it was like Carl Pei’s departure from OnePlus. Carl Pei left OnePlus in October 2020, shortly after that OPPO announced it was “merging” with OnePlus. Which was kind of weird since it was already the same company. But some things changed at, what was once known as BBK. OPPO became it’s own company and vivo its own company. Now, OPPO, OnePlus and realme all use the same software, with some small tweaks between each brand.
A few other things changed at OnePlus. Pete Lau became more of a face of the company, while being CEO of both OnePlus and OPPO. We also noticed that OxygenOS became more like ColorOS. Really, the two platforms merged into a hybrid model.
The OnePlus that Pei had created was pretty much gone, but that was a good thing. OnePlus was becoming more and more mainstream, versus being an enthusiast phone. Which was needed to make the brand take off. That also included changing their stance on water resistance certifications. Since every other brand, including cheap phones and foldables, all have IP ratings.
Now, OnePlus is starting to move back to that enthusiast role with the OnePlus 15. Taking less importance on the cameras, and focusing more on performance. In fact, during the launch event this week, OnePlus spent just a couple of minutes on the cameras, out of its 45 minute long launch event.
And as another observation, last year with the OnePlus 13, the company spent a ton of time on IP69. Since it was really the first device to launch with an IP69 certification, besides OPPO. In fact, OnePlus took North American media on a cruise to the Bahamas last year, and did plenty of demos with the OnePlus 13 in a portable washing machine and a portable dishwasher to show us that it could survive even with the faux leather back.
The post How OnePlus Went from Mocking IP Ratings to Mastering Them appeared first on Android Headlines.
